


atlas hands

by annelesbonny



Category: Black Sails
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Minor Violence, Romance, gratuitous literary references, mostly of the emotional kind
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-04
Updated: 2017-05-04
Packaged: 2018-10-27 22:39:07
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,243
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10818207
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/annelesbonny/pseuds/annelesbonny
Summary: Miranda gifted him with Milton on their fifth wedding anniversary with a wicked smile on her lips and mirth dancing in her eyes. His head in her lap as he read, her hair tickling his forehead when she leaned over to point at one line or another.Sometime after he finished, Miranda said, “He reminded me of you.”“Lucifer?”“Don’t be dramatic, Thomas.”(the one where Thomas Hamilton experiences the world through gratuitous literary references)





	atlas hands

atlas hands

 

_but in the starlit ink of constellations_

_you have written:_

_endure_.

 

**i.** **paradise lost**

Miranda gifted him with Milton on their fifth wedding anniversary with a wicked smile on her lips and mirth dancing in her eyes. His head in her lap as he read, her hair tickling his forehead when she leaned over to point at one line or another.

Sometime after he finished, Miranda said, “He reminded me of you.”

“ _Lucifer_?”

“Don’t be dramatic, Thomas.”

She gave him a look and went back to braiding her hair down for the night. He watched her reflection in the mirror grow thoughtful, then smile, turn her head slightly and quote:

“‘Can it be a sin to know? Can it be death?’ Yes, I rather think that is like you. Insatiable curiosity, a complete inability to do what you’re told. _Dramatic_.”

Thomas laid back against his pillow, a grin tugging at his mouth.

“But really, darling, _me_? Bringing about the _fall of man_? I do think that’s a bit much.”

“Perhaps,” she said softly and kissed his forehead. “You’re more likely to find a handsome man and get him to do it for you.”

 

A year later, he met James McGraw.

The intoxication was immediate, a meeting of minds like which Thomas had not come close to touching since he and Miranda met. James, though, was entirely something else. Dark auburn hair and shockingly open eyes for a soldier, incapable of masking his amusement or indulgence, irritation or anger. He was a study in emotion, carried so carefully within those broad shoulders, beneath that tipping hat. He tempered Thomas, teased him, brought him back to earth with a quick, crooked grin, a constant reminder that for all their lofty ideals and ambitions, they remained only two men, engaged in what often felt like a battle against all of England.

They drifted ever closer, drawn by the same current, while Miranda watched with a secret smile. She’d told him of their affair before it even began, had encouraged him to continue his own pursuit despite his doubts. Now, of course, it seemed inevitable that they were to collide, hopefully brilliantly, in a shower of sparks.

When it happened, it happened slowly and then all at once, the deafening silence followed by the crack of thunder and the lightning stuck the tree; all that was left was to burn.

Thomas’ heart thudded in his chest to the beat of military drums, heat in his cheeks from James’ impassioned defense of him and good God, the look on his father’s face as he was ordered from his own house would be one Thomas would cherish for a long while.

Time stopped, along with the impending consequences for their actions, when Thomas, enthralled, ensorcelled, in love, bent and kissed James on the mouth. He did not think of it then, how catastrophic the change that would result from that kiss, from Thomas’ thumb against James’ cheek, James’ hands gripping his waist, his shoulder, the back of his head. It was the thing over which wars were waged, and a thousand ships deployed, that drove empires into the dust, and great men to their knees. It was the thing for which angels fell.

 

**ii. the seafarer**

Despite his desire to see James again after the three long months of his absence, Thomas had rather hoped his deployment to Nassau would keep an ocean between James and the next visit from his father. But any thought of future complications vanished at the sight of James, bearded, exhausted, all in one piece, in Thomas’ sitting room. Three months which felt like six, a year, ten years, and all Thomas could think, staring into sea-green eyes, gripping a calloused, rough hand as familiar to him as his own, was _my God, don’t ever leave me again_.

Miranda worried; he recognized it for months, knew that right now she had cornered James in the study to share her fears with him. His Miranda, his truest friend, his wife, would go to her grave protecting him. Thomas was not so naïve nor so bold as to not be afraid of what consequences they may one day face, but what was right was never easy, and above all else, _this was right_. James knew that, as did Miranda, which is why Thomas was unsurprised when they emerged from the study, Miranda’s jaw set, James’ eyes fixed on Thomas, as if he was the only person in the room. Miranda took Peter’s arm, and then, they were.

As soon as the door clicked shut, James reached for him and Thomas met him half way. James’ arms came up around him, an anchor around his back, between his shoulders, and Thomas sagged. James made a small, concerned noise in the back of his throat.

“You look exhausted.”

Thomas smiled, brushed his cheek against that new beard, pleasantly surprised at how it felt against his skin.

“Funny, I was just about to say the same to you.”

James pulled back enough to rest his forehead against Thomas’, breath ghosting across each other’s mouths.

“Miranda is very worried about you,” James admitted after a moment.

“You, as well, I imagine,” Thomas sighed and kissed him once, twice.

“Well, yes, but she knows I know how to use a gun.”

James smiled against his mouth.

“I know how to use a gun!” Thomas felt the need to protest.

“Not remotely well.”

Thomas huffed a laugh. He was, after all, terribly unsuited for violence outside of the verbal variety. James kissed his cheek, his brow, the corner of his mouth.

“It is good you are back,” he said softly. “I was beginning to fear we had lost you to the sea.”

James traced Thomas’ bottom lip with thumb, his eyes unexpectedly serious.

“Do you know this poem? ‘Indeed there is not so proud-spirited a man in the world, nor so generous of gifts, nor so bold in his youth, nor so brave in his deeds, nor so dear to his lord’,” James’ lips quirked minutely, “that he never in his seafaring has a worry, as to what his Lord will do to him.’ I admit to feeling some kinship to its author.”

“ _The Seafarer_ ,” Thomas said around the tightness in his throat. “I know it. And Nassau? Was it truly as bad as you say?”

James hesitated.

“Nassau is a place trembling with potential, but poisoned by breathtaking violence. And not just from the pirates, though they certainly compound the issue. The men in power there, English men, know that there is a kind of order in lawlessness, in chaos, and they exploit it with impunity. I fear as we move forward we will be forced to contend with these men, and it may prove a task no less trying than that of securing universal pardons for piracy.”

Thomas grimaced.

“Oh good.”

James laughed, clearly startled into it, and leaned up to kiss Thomas again, this time allowing it to deepen, for Thomas’ hands to slide up his chest, toying with all those brass buttons, while James pulled him closer, hand cupping the back of his neck.

“Would you mind terribly if we continued this conversation later? I have a request of you.”

James smirked against his mouth, broad hands skimming up and down his back with light, teasing touches.

“A request, my lord?”

“Come to bed,” Thomas said softly.

“I will have to think on it.”

“ _James_.”

Laughing again, and looking years younger for it, James pulled him from the room.

 

**iii. the triple fool**

He supposed the fact that he had not been dragged from his home in chains was his father’s idea of a favor, but Thomas would not have fought regardless. The moment strange men barreled past the butler, through to the sitting room, he knew those consequences had finally come to call. He stood in a daze, as Miranda angrily demanded answers. Their uninvited guests did not even acknowledge her presence, which, predictably, only served to anger her further until Thomas touched her shoulder.

She looked back at him, eyes bright, almost wild in their ferocity and he knew what would have to be done if this was not to escalate further. If Miranda was incandescent in her rage, then James would be apocalyptic, and sooner rather than later, they would both pay a price that Thomas could not abide.

“My dear, please. Don’t.” The words scrapped his throat, but his voice remained steady.

Miranda whirled on him, her anger mingling with her fear.

“Thomas, I—.”

“My lord, you are to come with us. By order of the earl,” the taller of the two men spoke stiffly, the iron line of his jaw set and his eyes carefully blank.

“I see. For what reason?”

The man’s expression shifted for half a second into something darker and told Thomas all he needed to know. A numbing chill spread through his body, freezing blood, his breath, all awareness except for the mantra is his head: _James, James, James_.

“For acts contrary to nature, my lord.”

Miranda started shouting again, furious and trembling with it, but Thomas heard nothing beyond the ringing in his ears.

“Where is Lieutenant McGraw?”

The man simply stared at him as if he was a particularly disgusting roach he’d been forced dispose of, but Thomas, no longer interested in propriety, politics, or playing his father’s _fucking_ games, strode forward suddenly, reducing the space between them to centimeters, taking something close to pleasure when his father’s man took half a step back, before catching himself and flushing.

“As of yet, sir, we are still under my roof and _you will answer my question_.”

The man’s face reddened, big, angry blotches across his cheeks and forehead, but before he did anything other than bluster, his companion, silent up until this point, stepped forward.

“The lieutenant is being dismissed from service, sir. He is with Admiral Henessey as we speak,” he spoke quickly, without looking at his partner.

“No charges have been filed then?”

Thomas hardly dared to hope, but he thought if only James was spared, if he was to remain unharmed, even if Thomas was never to see him again, perhaps, he could endure.

“No, sir. But we’ve been instructed to inform you that can change, should you not comply with the earl’s orders.”

He handed Thomas a letter, written in his father’s hand. He read it quickly and fought to hide his reaction, though everything within him revolted against it, threatened to make him sick with fear and panic. After a moment, he refolded the letter, handed it to Miranda, but kept his hand curled around her closed fist to keep her from reading it yet.

Thomas stared at her, bone-white and trembling in front of him, and took her other hand.

“No,” she said brokenly, having guessed at once what he was about to ask of her, “Thomas, please.”

He did not want to do this, fear, grief, and helplessness stirred a maelstrom in his chest, but he thought of James, his hair lighting up like the dawn in the sunlight, of Miranda’s smile, of a time before the laughter lines on her face deepened into worry. He thought of them as they were once. Happy. Christ, but they’d been happy, hadn’t they?

“You’re not to come for me, Miranda, no matter what,” he whispered and watched her shatter.

“Thomas—.”

“Tell James, tell him you’re to take care of each other. Promise me, darling, I can bear anything if you promise me this.”

This time, his voice did crack and Miranda reached for him, wrapped him up in her arms and held on. He gripped her back, inhaled shakily in the curve of her neck, and if a tear slipped from his eye, it hid in her hair. Thomas pulled away, one hand still grasping hers. She startled when he slipped the silver ring from his pinky finger to her palm.

“Give it to him,” he whispered. “Tell him—.”

“He _knows_ , my darling. He knows.”

Her eyes never left his face as he backed out of the room, his father’s men flanking him on either side.

“Wait!” Miranda cried, before they made it to the front door. “Where are you’re taking him?”

The man who had refused to tell Thomas about James, turned his head slightly, and said, with no small amount of satisfaction:

“Bethlem Royal Hospital.”

Thomas closed his eyes, Miranda’s cry of grief, echoing in his head.

 

Bedlam. He understood why they called it so; chaos and rupture, an explosion of uncertainty and confusion which could no longer be contained, _madness_.

Thomas did not think himself mad, but more and more often he found himself wishing he was. He traced the wet grey walls of his cell with his eyes, followed each fissure in the stone to its origin, the very first crack. He wondered that if he had done something similar in his own life, saw the cracking before the break, would it have ended like this?

Three years. Three years since he had been escorted from his home, from his wife, from James, torn from his life because his father had decreed it, because he had not lived as he should, had not loved as he should. He did not see the cracks, the warnings, until it split, burst apart like the skin of a rotten fruit, revealing maggots and mush. He would not survive another three years. He did not think he would survive another one.

It was always loud inside the asylum, wails and screams, cries for help and helpless sobbing, mutters, rants, and raves, but now a different sound stood out from the rest. Footsteps, purposeful, long strides, a man walking with a destination in mind, assured and unafraid. It was an echo of the past.

Peter Ashe stepped into the meager light outside Thomas’s cell.  

“I wondered if you’d ever come to see me,” Thomas said quietly, not looking up from his wrists and the thick manacles encircling them. “At first, I thought it was fear that kept you away, perhaps even my father. I worked out eventually that it was guilt.”

Thomas raised his head slowly, and met Peter’s eyes.

“What can I do for you, my Judas?”

Peter flinched, but Thomas had long lost his ability to take satisfaction from such hollow victories.

“Your father is dead.”

He wanted to say _good_ , instead he asked, “How?”

“Pirates.”

Thomas laughed, threw his head back against the cold stone wall and laughed, long and hard.

“Ah, my apologies, Peter.” He wiped at his streaming eyes. “It’s just I’ve not heard something so darkly poetic in a long while. Imagine what my father’s executioner could have been had our plans been brought to fruition. A farmer, maybe? Perhaps a craftsman? To think that in ending my life, he condemned also himself. With your help, of course,” he acknowledged with a scathing nod.

“I had no choice,” Peter said stiffly, staring at a spot over Thomas’ shoulder.

“There is always a choice!”

Thomas surged to his feet, stumbling slightly as his weakened muscles protested, throwing himself forward until he stood in front of the gate of his cell, hands pulled painfully to one side by the chains.

“You had a price, Peter, and it was thirty pieces of silver. Are you incapable of even doing me the courtesy of acknowledging it?”

Peter’s throat worked furiously beneath his clenched jaw. Thomas felt a trickle of blood on the inside of his wrist. Another scar.

“You paint yourself as Jesus in this story, but what you and McGraw were doing in that house…”

Thomas stepped back from the bars, truly shocked for the first time since Peter Ashe had appeared in front of him.

“That is your reason for all this? I understand greed, want of power, fear of what my father would have done had you not complied, but _this_? You wrought this destruction because we offended _your moral sensibilities_?”

Abruptly, the fight drained out of Thomas, and he sat down on his cot hard, his chest aching.

“‘I am two fools, I know,/ For loving, and for saying so’,” he whispered, thinking that this was as fitting a time as any for Donne.

“It is a sin. Grievous. Unnatural.” Peter said sharply, with a tone of a man who had the same, many times over.

“And betrayal is not? Treachery is not?” Thomas spoke softly to his hands, he could no longer bear to look at the man before him, a man he’d once called his good friend.

Peter said nothing. Thomas did not look up again until he heard another set of footsteps approaching, and a guard appeared, a set of keys in his hand.

Thomas stood warily, arms raised defensively in front of him.

“What is this?”

The guard pulled open the cell door, stepped inside after Peter.

“Your father is dead,” Peter repeated. “And I have arranged to have you moved from this place. There is a plantation in the colonies, and the men there are treated well. You’ll be on a ship within the hour.”

Thomas’ head spun, his hands shook uncontrollably as the guard reached out and unlocked his heavy manacles. He caught a glimpse of his wrists, the ugly scars and the blood, before a second, lighter pairs were snapped on. The chains were removed from his ankles completely.

“This isn’t freedom,” Thomas whispered.

“No,” Peter said heavily. “But  at least it is not this.”

 

  **iv.**   **doctor faustus**

 Thomas does not remember leading James from the cane field, does not remember pulling him into the barracks and securing the door behind them. He remembered only James’ hands on him, on the back of his neck, curled into his hair, running down his shoulders and back as if checking for wounds, or corporeality.

“He told me you died. That you’d taken your own life in Bethlem.” James whispered, when they’re pressed together on Thomas’ too small bunk, foreheads touching, breath mingling, legs hopelessly tangled.

“Who told you that?” Thomas asked softly, tracing James’ cheekbone with his finger, though he thought he already knew.

“Peter Ashe.” James spit the name from his mouth.

“He’s the one who moved me to this place, you know. I think he truly believed he was doing me a favor.”

James grimaced.

“It is better than Bethlem though,” Thomas hurried on. “Bethlem was—.”

Beatings and ice baths, rough restraints and leers, the gawking of spectators, chains heavy around his limbs. Thomas shuddered and James’ arms immediately folded around him. Thomas froze and then melted, so used to pain without comfort that he felt like a man dying of thirst given his first taste of water. He pressed his face into James’ neck, inhaled until all he smelled was sweat and sea water, _James_ , and the sour, bitter stench of Bethlem finally faded away.

“I’m so sorry, Thomas.” James whispered, his voice thick, cracking with tears. “I never should have left you there, I should have—.”

Thomas stopped him with a kiss.

“Stop. There was nothing you could have done.”

James does not need to know how Thomas fantasized about exactly that, James coming for him, protecting him from his tormentors, breaking the manacles from his wrists. He would spare James that pain until the day he died.

“I killed him. The earl. Your father,” James spoke slowly, haltingly, a fearful confession.

Thomas looked at him, his shorn hair and unruly beard, the new lines on his face, the familiar tilt of his mouth, the wary, desperate, hungry look on his face as he waited for Thomas to react, to offer condemnation or forgiveness. Maybe once Thomas would have recoiled, distanced himself from James’ violent vengeance, but he suspected the Thomas who would have done that, had died within Bethlem’s walls. He searched his heart and beyond a dull ache for a father who had never been, he could not find fault in the fact that there was one less cruel man in the world.

“That was why Peter could get me out of Bethlem, you know,” Thomas said finally. “My father’s death made that possible, _you_ made that possible. Another year in that place and the letter Peter sent you may have been true. I wish you did not have to carry this burden, but at the very least, do not carry it on my behalf.”

James let out a long, shuddering breath.

“That is only the beginning of my sins. The things I did—.”

“As Captain Flint?” Thomas supplied, and James gave him a stunned look.

“I’ve only just now put it together,” Thomas confessed with a sheepish smile.

James said nothing, just reached out and traced Thomas’ mouth his fingertips. Thomas caught his wrist, pressed his lips to his palm. He smiled when he saw his ring on James’ finger.

“So, Charles Town then. That was you?” Thomas asked after a moment.

James flinched, but didn’t look away.

“Yes. Miranda and I. We went to Peter, we thought he would _help_ us, but.”

James broke off, closed his eyes as if overcome with unspeakable grief and Thomas felt cold certainty settle in his belly.

“She died there, didn’t she?”

“In his fucking dining room. She recognized your clock, she realized that he was one who betrayed you. She screamed at him, and Peter’s man shot her for her it. Just like that,” His voice was rough and low, cracking with grief and rage. “She said she wanted his town to burn, so I burned it.”

The torrent of words stopped, but James continued to tremble. His hands shook violently in the space between them, and Thomas, slipping his arms around James’ waist and pulled him to him until that space vanished. James’ hands settled carefully on Thomas’ back, as if uncertain of their welcome. Thomas touched his face.

“Did you honestly think I would fault you for avenging my wife?”

James still did not open his eyes.

“You are far too forgiving. I am drowning in all the blood I’ve spilled.”

“Hold on to me,” Thomas whispered. “Let me save you.”

“Thomas…” James finally looked at him, his green eyes wide and wondering. “Why?”

“Why what?” he asked, and his own emotions crested until they broke across his lips and had to be spoken. “

Why do I not turn from you in disgust? Why do I not hate you, blame you, punish you for the things you have done? Why do I not despise you for letting your grief manifest as rage, for decimating the town that dared to take Miranda from you, for killing my father and Peter for daring to take me? You have been at war with the entire world, James, and it has cost you dearly. I will not add to the price. I love you, I will always love you, and had I been in your place, had I thought you dead, seen Miranda killed, had encountered whatever other horrors this world has thrown at you, I cannot imagine what I would have done.”

Thomas kissed James’ brow, and when he pulled back, James chased his mouth, kissed him soundly, and with intent, to convey all he could not yet say aloud in one, blistering kiss. They broke apart gasping, and Thomas laughed as James pressed kisses to his cheeks, chin, the corner of his mouth.

“’Why should you love him whom the world hates so?’” Thomas pressed their foreheads together, thinking of Marlowe and demons and souls. “’Because he love me more than all the world.’”

 

**v. the odyssey**

Eventually, they settled outside of Boston. The man who sent James to Savannah, a man with whom Thomas would like to have words with some day, John Silver, also sent along more money than even Thomas had seen. After James spoke with Oglethorpe, which Thomas was rather disappointed not to have witnessed what he assumed had been the brief return of Captain Flint, given the expression on Oglethorpe’s now bone-white face as he ushered them away, the money was passed to them and they left the plantation behind for good.

That first night, the bright stars drowned in the light of the full, round moon, Thomas stood at the window of the room they’d taken at an inn, and cried. James returned to find him, shoulders heaving, gasping with sobs, and went straight into a panic, looking about wildly as if the thing causing Thomas pain was something he could fight. James moved them to the bed, held him until eventually, his tears subsided and his breaths evened out.

“I am free,” Thomas said, and his voice trembled. “For the first time in ten years, there is a door and I can walk out of it. No one will stop me. I can go anywhere, at any time, without hindrance. To be able to choose again, I, well, it overwhelmed me.”

“I might follow you,” James admitted after a moment and Thomas smiled when James wiped the tears from his cheeks.

“Might?” He teased.

“I’d have to think on it.”

“ _James_.”

James grinned, a full, delighted smile, and one, Thomas suspected, had not been used in quite a long time. After a moment, he sobered, reached out and cupped Thomas’ cheek in his broad palm.

“Anywhere you want to go, I will follow you. Anything you want to do, I will do. I will be with you, unless you ask me not to be, and probably even then, too.”

Thomas laughed softly and laced their fingers together.

“So if I ever decide to go on a walk myself, should I expect to find you lurking about in the bushes?”

“Yes,” James replied, quite seriously.

Thomas laughed again.

“Then it is a good thing I do not ever want to be apart from you.”

They laid together in silence until Thomas spoke again.

“We should go to Boston.”

 

They went to Boston, and found neither of them had the nerves for the city anymore, the constant clatter of horses’ hooves and the thunder of the carts they pull, the people who talk a little too loudly, stand a little too close. James, Thomas knows, fears his reflexes, ten years as the most feared pirate captain in the world had done little to improve his social skills. He would as soon stab a man then shake his hand. Neither of them wanted that risk. And besides, Thomas also found the existence of most other people tiring. Now that he had the freedom to choose whom he interacted with and when, under what circumstances, he often found himself retreating to James, whose presence, above all others, settled something in his soul.

He was quite certain James felt the same, if the way his eyes tracked Thomas’ every movement, snapped to him when he entered a room, followed him when he left it, were any indication. If they clung a little too tight, neither of them ever complained.

Silver’s money bought them the supplies, but James and Thomas, both having grown used to long hours and hard labor, built their house themselves. Thomas would undoubtedly be picking splinters from his hands for the next decade, but as he stared at James, shirtless and wiping the saw dust from their newly finished front porch, he had not a single complaint.

“Are you going to come inside?” Thomas asked sometime later.

Neither of them had left the plantation with any possessions to speak of, but James was rather handy and Thomas, a knack for talking the price down on just about anything. As a result, their furnishings were sparse, but comfortable and most importantly, theirs.

James lingered in the front door, staring down at the threshold of their new home with such scrutiny that Thomas wondered if he was concerned about its intentions. His burnished copper hair, grown now to cover the tops of his ears, glinted in the light of the setting sun. Thomas held out his hand, calloused and scarred, unrecognizable as the hands of a man who had once been a lord. Slowly, James took it, and Thomas pulled him inside.

He closed the door and felt James shudder.

“What is it?” Thomas asked, rubbing small circles on the inside of James’ wrist with his thumb.

James struggled to speak, making several attempts and abandoning each of them.

“This is a home,” he managed finally, his eyes meeting Thomas’ with a familiar intensity which never ceased to set Thomas’ heart pounding.

“I never thought I would have one. Not really. The closest I ever came was with you and Miranda in London, but even that lacked…permanence. But this, this is something else. I find myself terrified and I’m not even entirely sure why.”

Frustration and agitation colored his words, but Thomas struggled to bite back his smile. For a man who felt so intensely, James always managed to be terribly inept at understanding his own emotions.

Thomas brushed his mouth across James’ knuckles.

“‘The wanderer, harried for years on end’,” he murmured.

Thomas found Odysseus tiring at times, but the story held particular relevance for James; the desperate man, unable to return home.  

“It is over, James,” he explained at the questioning look. “No more running, no more chains, no more pirates or plantation owners. There is nothing left for us to do but rest. And live, and love, I suppose. And I imagine that with time, we will become accustomed to the concept, but for now, darling, let’s start small. Come to bed with me.”

A tempest of emotion swirled in James’ eyes and he took Thomas’ face in his hands, kissed his forehead, his cheek, and finally, his mouth.

“How is it you always know what to say?” James whispered into his neck.

“I’m told my education was excellent,” Thomas replied, his tone light, but his voice shook slightly with his own, traitorous emotions.

“Indeed, my lord,” James murmured, now pressing open-mouthed kisses down Thomas’s throat, pulled at his shirt to get at his collarbone.

“Ah, James,” Thomas gasped, heat pooling in his belly. “We have a bed, a large, proper bed now, and I am not too proud to admit my knees are not what they used to be.”

He felt James smile, his teeth scraping the line of Thomas’ jaw, his laugh reverberating from where their chests pressed together.

“Then, by all means, my lord, let us go to bed.”

 

Several hours, and reminders that they were not as young as they used to be, later, James carded his fingers through Thomas’ sweat-soaked hair. Thomas, for his part, turned his head slightly to kiss James’ shoulder before settling back down, his temple pressed to James’ cheek, his hand curled on his chest, over his heart.

“You know,” Thomas said after a moment, “When you were making this bed, I half-expected to find you dragging a trunk of an olive tree into our house.”

He yelped when James tugged sharply at his hair, pulling his head back and swallowing the sound with a kiss.

“Does that make you Penelope then?” he asked when they broke apart, smirking down at Thomas, who grinned.

“Well, you did come home to me,” he whispered, then changed tactics, matching James’ smirk with one of his own. “Though I will say, in the interim, I did have significantly less suitors.”

“Good.” James growled without losing his smile, and kissed Thomas again and again.

**Author's Note:**

> I've been not so low-key losing my mind over Black Sails on [tumblr](http://annelesbonny.tumblr.com/) so you know, fic happened
> 
> Each of the sections is titled after a work from which one of these nerds quotes at some point. In order: "Paradise Lost" by John Milton, "The Seafarer", which is an Old English poem, "The Triple Fool" by John Donne, "Doctor Faustus" by Christopher Marlowe, and of course, "The Odyssey" by Homer.
> 
> Quote at the beginning from [here](http://achillics.tumblr.com/post/112723699506/lift-with-your-knees-atlas-the-heavens-are-a)


End file.
